Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 1920. Directed by John S. Robertson.

(4/18/00)

It was a very bad 16mm print and I was very tired. I didn't enjoy this film very much--didn't find it very interesting.

I didn't think that much of John Barrymore. He didn't do very much except show off his profile as Jekyll and wear some grusome makeup as Hyde. None of the other performers made much of an impression on me, although there were some nice shots of Brandon Hurst in the dinner sequence.

I certainly didn't think that much of Dr. Jekyll. He supposedly wants to separate man's good and evil natures so that he can be good without being distracted by temptations. But what he actually does do is let his evil self/dark side/id run around loose without any control whatsoever. This is responsible science? The guy is an absolute jerk.

He's actually a man in denial because Jekyll really wants to be Hyde and act like that, but he doesn't want to take responsibility for it. It's quite obvious that what really pushes him into taking the serum is the fact that he wants to have an affair with the sexy dancer played by Nita Naldi. But he won't own up to that and accept the consequences, so he unleashes his shadow on the world at large.

Now, wanting to have sex with someone is not evil. It is a very natural thing to want. But society (and particularly Victorian society--at least in the popular imagination) claims that it is. So the film is also about Victorian hypocrisy and in that sense Jekyll is a victim. He has been suckered into accepting that wanting to have an affair is evil and the result is a string of horrific consequences.

Sir George Carew is the embodiment of this hypocrisy. He spouts all this stuff about how important it is to experience life, etc., yet he is so protective of his daughter that he forbids Jekyll to see her again until he gives an account of his association with this man Hyde. Sir George's words have consequences and his murder seems perfectly appropriate.

Looking at the changeover scene in the year 2000, Barrymore's thrashing about seems a little bit overdone. And his Mr. Hyde makeup struck me as too grotesque to be taken seriously. I can't imagine how he managed to attract Nita Naldi. The hallucination where he sees the giant spider was OK, but the whole film really left me cold. It's too bad.